Due Preparations for the Plague

by Janette Turner Hospital

  In one quick move, she steps out of blouse and skirt. Underneath, she is wearing a filthy sleeveless undershirt and gray flannel long johns from a Salvation Army bin. “I’m a bag lady,” she says. “I live a few intersections from the Capitol. You know that crossover point where the property taxes plummet and there’s a kind of sea change in the type of human being you see? Someone offered me twenty bucks to strip while the trumpeter pours the spit out of his horn. Throw in a meal and a bed, I told them, and it’s a deal. So here I am.

  “Now the question is,” she murmurs into the mike, stepping down off the stage and feeling her way between the tables, “the question is: whose bed is it going to be? Who’s going to be the lucky man?” She taps this man and that on the shoulder. “Not you, not you, not you,” she says. There is laughter at each table as she passes. “I’m rather particular,” she says, “about the men whose bed I’ll crawl into. I’m partial to the smell of power. Well, it’s the local aphrodisiac in this town, isn’t it? Can’t get up without it.”

  As faces loom out of the candlelight, Samantha sniffs at them with elaborate show. Sometimes she sees one of her professors from Georgetown U, but not often. It’s more a hangout for congressmen, senators, lobbyists, publicists, Pentagon brass, the whole Capitol Hill tribe. “This man,” she says, tapping him on the shoulder, and suddenly the spot swings toward them and highlights a well-known face, “this man has more government secrets tucked into his jockey shorts than you have bees in your honeysuckle. But we’ve got our little secrets here too.” And the spot moves slightly to bathe in white light the pillowy-lipped young woman at his side. She is expensively dressed—perhaps wrapped is a better word—in something clingy and silver. “Tinfoil,” Samantha announces, crumpling a little of the cloth in her hand. The metallic sound of foil comes from the speakers. People laugh. “Luckily for our patrons,” Samantha says, “we don’t allow cameras in here. If we did, they might have to pay dearly for their pleasures.” The spot lingers on the bare shoulders of the young woman and pans along the slit that runs from the hem of her skirt to thigh-high. “Anyway …” Samantha pauses dramatically, and the spot turns back to the senator’s face. “I’m sure he’s paid enough for her already.” Much laughter, as the spot and Samantha move on.

  She weaves between tables, she moves between dark and light. Each stretch of dark is immense. She slides her foot forward on the tiled floor and feels for the void. It can open up anywhere with no more than a second’s warning. Sometimes she has to steady herself by catching hold of a chair back or someone’s shoulder. She believes that Salamander may be present. He is her compass and her magnetic North Pole. She will find him. She believes she will know him by his smell. She has fantasies of causing Salamander pain, and when he is screaming, she will make him lead her to Sirocco, because Sirocco may have been the one who lit the fuse. But both of them knew, both of them planned, and the knowing is not something that Sam will forgive. “Halloween was a week ago,” she says, “but it’s always Halloween here, isn’t it? The place is always full of spooks. Trick or treat, that’s the question. Who’s the spook of the week?

  “Not you, not you, not you,” she says, tapping shoulders as she passes by. “When the lights go out in Washington, the powerful play musical secrets and musical beds. Did you hear the one about the guy in Intelligence who made his own lie and went to bed with it? Gave birth to an international incident but the CIA and the NSA pressured him to put it up for adoption. It grew up to be a full-sized war and then—because this is the way things go these days—it went looking for its birth father. There were blood tests, DNA, the whole works. Everything pointed to someone high up in Intelligence, who denied all on the grounds that he never fucked with the lie of the land. Turned out he was a double agent so they tripled him and packed him off to Pakistan and arranged for another double agent to accidentally on purpose bump him off.”

  This is the way it goes. Samantha loves the nervousness of the laughter. She gets high on it. “Who’s going to make the honor roll tonight?” she croons. She likes to tantalize. The spotlight roams and picks out faces here and there. “All sinners together, isn’t this cozy?” she asks. “All in the same boat. It’s like being crammed into the same hijacked plane.

  “You know,” she confides, “I only go to bed with men powerful enough to have code names. I went to bed once with a man whose code name was Goliath, but he was too much of a Philistine for my taste. Another time, I had sex with Arctic Fox, but it left me cold. And then there was Salamander, whoosh, what a slitherer, what a firecracker, comes like a rocket. I had to turn the hose on him, but it didn’t douse his flame for one second. That guy is burning, burning, burning, first cousin to a desert wind. Keep your fire extinguisher handy when Salamander’s around because he knows about explosions before they come, and he knows where the hot sirocco blows.

  “Did you hear the one about the former head of the CIA who made a deal with bin Laden? ‘Look,’ he says to bin Laden, ‘it’s the year 2000, and we know you’ve got a millennial itch. You need global publicity and global sympathy. We need to nail your ass. Neither of us can make a move, because we know everything you plan to do before you do it, and you know every countermove we plan to take. We’re both stalemated. So here’s a proposal. How about we bankroll a movie, Getting Osama, with a look-alike actor? In the movie, your cave stronghold is infiltrated by Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford. Your guys catch them. Our guys survive barbaric Islamic persuasion. They get their hands cut off, then their ears. They don’t talk. They escape and blow your compound and the entire Taliban army to smithereens. In the movie, only your little son survives the blast, and Harrison Ford gives him his pack of baseball cards and takes him back to California. When your son asks Sammy Sosa for his autograph, there’s not a dry eye in the house. Your little boy becomes an icon like Elian Gonzalez. Think of the public relations coup. As far as global opinion is concerned, depending on political allegiance, of course, you die a tragic hero or you got what was coming to you. Either way, the violence ends, the famine ends, the suffering ends, and the whole world loves your little son.’

  “‘What’s the catch?’ bin Laden wants to know.

  “‘The catch is, we film on location in Afghanistan.’”

  And so it goes, and so it goes.

  Even by candlelight, there are men who murmur comments into handheld dictaphones. But stand-up comics are like jesters in the court of medieval kings. They can take liberties. They can get away with murder, so to speak. They can make fools of those who walk in the corridors of power, and the powerful love them for it. The powerful court them. They offer proposals and enticements. They seek occasions to compile a photographic dossier in case the need for future blackmail should arise.

  “My dear,” a silver-haired gentleman says, stroking Samantha’s thigh. “What a wickedly delicious mind you have. May I buy you a drink?”

  (Will you walk into my parlor? says the spider to the fly.

  There’s a microphone behind me and a hidden camera eye.)

  “You may buy me anything you please,” Samantha says, low and sultry, making sheep’s eyes and sitting on his lap.

  “Excuse me,” some clumsy lout says, lurching against her. She is doused in ice cubes and scotch, and the drunken bungler catches hold of her wrist.

  “Sam,” he says, low and intense, “are you out of your mind?”

  “Jacob,” she murmurs, her lips against his ear, “mind your own damn business.”

  “I’m minding it,” he whispers.

  “You are sabotaging weeks of preparation.”

  “I’m saving your skin. I’ll meet you out on the street in fifteen minutes. Be there.” Samantha shakes her head in a gesture of incredulity. “Can you believe this?” she says to the silver-haired gentleman, brushing scotch from her bag-lady shirt. “I’m soaked. I’ll have to go change.”

  3. Phoenix One, Phoenix Two

  “You’re sailing way too close to the wind, Sam. It’s stupid and it’s
dangerous.”

  “Part of the fallout, isn’t it? We’re all addicted to risk.”

  “Is that so?” Jacob lines up cardboard drink coasters, three round ones on his left, two diamond-shaped ones on his right. He moves a round one from the left side to the right and places it between the two diamonds. He frowns, considering this equation, then moves it back. The tavern they are in is small and dimly lit, which suits them. Ironically, they seem to need confined spaces.

  “It’s well known,” Samantha says flippantly. She is at pains to be flippant with Jacob, to stop herself sliding into him. Sometimes their edges match so exactly that a waiter will bring them only one drink. Nutrient fusion, Jacob calls it. No; ego confusion, Sam insists. Phoenix One and Phoenix Two are the names they are known by in their circle—sometimes for particular kinds of communication, sometimes for a grim private joke—but they are Siamesed from the same charcoal pit, two barbecued peas in a pod. Their circle is small and exclusive. The members call themselves the Phoenix Club, and they mostly make contact via the Web.

  “Risk addiction’s commonplace for our lot,” Samantha says. “For all survivors. Earthquake survivors, rape survivors, whatever. There’s a special section in bookstores now: survival lit. Articles all over the place. You must have read some.”

  “Not my cup of tea.”

  “Well, I’m telling you, whether you want to know about it or not, risk addiction’s part of the syndrome. There’s statistical evidence, conferences, papers, proceedings, God knows what. Interesting to speculate on the reasons, don’t you think? And if you want to know why I’m babbling on like this, it’s because that disapproving look of yours upsets me.”

  “There are certain kinds of risk that you don’t have the right to take.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they put all of us in greater jeopardy, that’s why.”

  “We’re all in perpetual jeopardy anyway. Don’t we take that as a given?”

  “That’s why we have a certain understanding.”

  “Right,” Samantha snaps. “We understand that all of us manage in whatever way we can and we don’t sit in judgment on each other. I don’t judge, you don’t judge, he doesn’t judge, we don’t judge—”

  “But we do keep an eye out for each other. That’s part of the deal.” He touches Samantha’s cheek. “You’re manic,” he says uneasily. “What are you on?”

  “On getting somewhere. On the trail getting hot. On nailing down answers.”

  “Sam, Sam. There aren’t any answers. Or none that will make the slightest difference.”

  “It’s amazing what I’m learning from next-of-kin. It’s amazing what the website brings in.”

  “You’re burning yourself up.”

  “I’m on fire,” she acknowledges, “but I’m learning plenty. I’m doing this for the future. I’m doing this for the historical record. As well as for my thesis in American history, don’t forget. It’s like a map coming into focus.”

  “The Phoenix Club’s one thing. We need each other. It helps, keeping contact, it helps us all. But you’re casting your net too wide. You’re drawing dangerous attention.”

  “I need to draw fire. I know exactly what I’m doing and I’m careful.”

  “You’re reckless.” He clenches his hands together. He leans across the table, his forearms over the line-up of coasters. He looks like a gambler shielding a spread of cards. “We need each other to survive, Sam. We need each other too much. If something happened to you—”

  “It won’t.”

  “If something did—”

  “What can happen to someone who’s indifferent to what happens?”

  “Enough.”

  “We’re immune to harm, Jacob, or we wouldn’t be here. You can’t snuff a phoenix out.”

  “Unfortunately, you can.” He pulls at his fingers and the knuckles make an ominous sound. He looks more ravaged than usual. “I went to see Cassie yesterday.”

  “Ah,” Samantha says uneasily. “How is she?”

  “Getting worse, I think.”

  “So that’s what all this is about.”

  “Not only that.”

  Jacob blinks, slowly and heavily. He makes Samantha think of an owl and the thought trips a nervous tic in her hand. Her thumb, of its own free will, does a little series of calisthenics. “You had that look on your face,” she says, “when the news broke—”

  “Why are you whispering? I can’t hear you.”

  “You were sitting on the cot across from me. In Germany. When we watched the plane go up. That’s how you looked.”

  “Stop it, Sam.”

  She hasn’t meant to go there, but all roads lead back to the airstrip on the TV screen.

  Jacob turns a coaster around and around in his hands.

  The cots and the blankets smell musty to Samantha. They must have been pulled out of storage in a damp basement. This must have been hurriedly done. There is a boy next to Samantha sucking a blanket, there is another boy across from her, an older boy whose eyelids droop and who plays with the lid of a screwtop jar. Samantha does not yet know that his name is Jacob. He turns the lid around and around. We interrupt this program to bring you a news alert …

  Samantha takes the coaster roughly from Jacob’s hands. “You’re making me edgy.”

  “You should be edgy. You’re drawing fire, Sam. You know what’s going to happen? Someone will get nervous and clamp down on access to documents again, but that won’t be the worst of it.”

  “What will be the worst of it?”

  “More of us will start meeting up with accidents.”

  “More of us? What do you mean?”

  “Stick to finishing your degree at Georgetown,” he says. “Stop this crazy moonlighting stuff. As a stand-up comic, you’re not funny.”

  “Students have to moonlight to survive, and this pays better than waiting tables. What did you mean, more of us?”

  “More dead phoenixes. Chien Bleu is not a good way to go. I have an ominous feeling about it.” He turns to signal for the waiter. When he turns, his jacket sleeve rides up on his arm. The cuffs of his shirt are unbuttoned and turned back, pale blue cotton against his faint tan, and the tracks on his forearm look to Sam like the footprints of the beast.

  “Oh, Jacob.” She catches hold of his wrist in blind panic. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s no more dangerous than what you’re doing,” he says. He pulls his wrist away and buttons his cuffs. “And a lot less stupid.”

  “How can you say that?” When she closes her eyes, she feels the nothing under the table. Her sense of balance goes. “You’re right,” she concedes. “We’re not safe.”

  Jacob leans over the table and takes both her hands in his. “Look at me, Sam.”

  “How’s that going to help me when you’re covered in needle tracks?”

  “So governments do shady things when national security’s at stake. They make mistakes. Is this news to anyone?”

  “Oh, forgive me. I thought accountability for shady activity, even in wartime, was one of the pillars of our democracy. I thought I remembered learning that in high school. Silly me. I thought a secret service accountable to no one was Nazi Germany and evil-Soviet-empire stuff.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, get down out of your pulpit,” Jacob says. “Governments make mistakes and they cover them up and they do not appreciate exposure. We stand a better chance of making it if we take that as the starting point.”

  “Oh, right,” Samantha says bitterly. “I can see where that starting point is getting you.”

  “It’s been a bad week,” he concedes. “And it’ll get worse if you don’t put on the brakes.”

  “You said that before. More of us will have accidents, you said. What did you mean, more of us?”

  “We lost another one.”

  She stares at him.

  “Another phoenix. We lost him in August, but I just found out about it.”

  “Wait,” Samantha says. It is
not as though they are not used to bad news, but due preparations must be made. “Wait. I have to—I’ll just …”

  She goes to the bathroom and locks the door. Her hands are shaking. She starts counting backwards from one hundred. She counts down through ritual layers, down through the Cenozoic and the Mesozoic and the Paleozoic and the Precambrian. Under the Precambrian is the time before the plane disappeared in a ball of fire, and there’s a space there, a space that Samantha can think her way into if she counts backward far enough. In that space, everyone is still alive. She imagines it with chandeliers and a dance floor. Her mother is in a strapless dress of pale blue silk, her father kisses her mother on the neck. The dancers move in slow motion, the future casts no shadow at all, and there is music. Samantha can wind it in like a ribbon from the violin of Jacob’s father, Avi Levinstein, who plays with his whole body; and Jacob, he says, bending over his instrument and his bow, Jacob, I am so happy that you and Samantha … and Samantha, he says, I have pleasure to present to you some of our friends on this flight, and the inventory unscrolls itself, a gold-leaf list of the gifted, the flamboyant, the intense, the cellist Izak Goldberg and his wife Victoria, bel canto soprano, and Cassie, their daughter; Yasmina Shankara, the Bombay movie star, and Agit, her son; and so on and so forth until Samantha turns to Jacob and asks: Does your father know everyone? and she watches the patterns that people make with the swirls of their lives, brushing one another in passing, sometimes knowing it, sometimes not. She can see everyone who was on the plane. She holds them that way in her mind.

  When she gets back to the table, Jacob has his head down. His hair brushes a small jigger of mustard. “Hey,” Samantha says. “You asleep?”

  “We lost Agit.”